Page 24 of Love Thy Brother
I couldn’t face anything, and that had always been my problem.
You’re weak.
Sometimes I fought that voice in my head, but not today. I went outside, slipping out of the back door to the yard me and the boys used to kick back when we weren’t working. Last year, we’d built a shelter from an old bus stop. It was the ugliest thing, but it kept the battered leather couch dry. The fire pit when we got round to lighting it.
Maybe later. Oscar was at sea for the next few days, so I couldn’t see myself going home, even though I knew another night without sleep would kill me.
My heart was still clattering in my ears. Disassociation kicked in. Familiar surroundings became a distant place I couldn’t quite reach, and anxiety flared to full-blown, oxygen sucking panic.
Fuck’s sake.I focused on the wind whipping up from the harbour a few streets away. The cold, salty air reminded me I’d left my jacket on my bike and it was going to rain, but I made no move to rescue it.
I sank onto the couch instead and dropped my head in my hands, fingers tangling in the hair slipping from the messy knot at the nape of my neck. Couldn’t remember the last time I’d retied it. I probably looked homeless by now.
Fucking felt it, even on a ripped sofa I’d sat on so many times it was moulded to my body. I feltsick, but not in the upchucking way. I felt it everywhere else. As if everything inside me was wrong.
As if the warm fingers that slid over my kneecaps, sudden and soothing, were legit and not a figment of my desperate imagination.
“Riv.”
Nope.
“Riv.”
I opened my eyes.
Reddened hazel orbs blazed back at me. Scruffy hair tumbling over broad shoulders. Handsome face pinched in gentle concern.
It was the first time he’d touched me in... fuck, I didn’t even know. It didn’t matter. All I knew was I’d forgotten what it did to me. How it made me forget there was air in my lungs and blood in my veins. How it numbed me to everything but the sear of his hands on my knees. “What are you doing here?”
Rubi shifted slightly, balancing his big body in a crouch at my feet. “Nothing that can’t wait. Wanna take a breath for me?”
“No.”
“’Kay. Suffocate and die. It’d make me super happy.”
“That’s the shittest reverse psychology I’ve ever heard.”
Rubi shrugged, a small smile playing on his kissable lips, bottom one puffy and split open. “If you’re talking, you’re breathing. That’s good enough for me.”
I wondered how long he’d been there, watching me lose my shit in the rain. He was the only person who knew I had panic attacks like a boss. That they made me shake so hard I’d draw blood just to make it fucking stop.
You don’t do that shit anymore.
No. But I wanted to. And some days that was just as bad.
Rubi heaved himself from the ground, his touch slipping away. I mourned it until he filled the space next to me on the couch, leg pressed against mine, dropping a heavy arm around me.
Any other day, I’d shove him off, but the will to repeat every dickish move I’d ever made over and over again just wasn’t there.
He was so fucking warm, I leaned into him. Regretted it but couldn’t stop. My head collided with his shoulder, and I left it there, closing my eyes, shutting out any part of the universe that wasn’t him and me on this tatty couch in the rain.
For long minutes, it was perfect. The quiet thump of Rubi’s big heart. His soft breaths. The light pattern he traced on my bicep with his fingertips. I wanted to sleep here, maybe forever.
Then I remembered who we were, and the lives we’d survived to get to this point.
I sat up, jerking away from him and propelling myself to my feet. “What are you doing here?”
Rubi didn’t blink. Just watched me, the strain of however his day had played out still etched on his face in more ways than his pulverised bottom lip.
